Wednesday, 25 May 2022

Federal election

Ms HALL (Footscray) (16:46): I grieve at the thought that the Liberal Party might one day have the opportunity to lead this great progressive state and the impact that that might have on Victorian women and on climate change action. It is the Wednesday after a federal election where the women of Australia in particular made their voices heard loud and clear. The women of Australia did not want a bulldozer who wandered around Parliament House with a pet coal rock mocking the science of climate change. The women of Australia did not like being derided by conservatives as ‘doctors’ wives’ when in fact they were the doctors. The women of Australia did not like being told that they should be grateful that they were not shot when they protested that they had had enough of the violence and gender discrimination that exists in this country, including in Australian Parliament House. The women of Australia had had enough of a Prime Minister who could only relate to the experience of women through the prism of being a father or a husband. It was the women of Australia who were the lifters, not the leaners during the last two years of this global pandemic. It was largely women who worked in the caring industries like aged care, who put their wellbeing and their lives on the line every single day to protect others. Our efforts to protect those essential workers during the pandemic were met by calls of those opposite to open up.

The Victorian Liberals’ response to the federal election this week in essence has been to say to Victorian women, ‘Women of Victoria, be cool. Don’t worry, we’ve gotten rid of Bernie’. For 23 years they have turned a blind eye. After 23 years of support from the Victorian Liberal Party, only now, on the Tuesday after an election where the women of Australia spoke so strongly about issues that are important to them—about being heard, about action on climate change—have they decided to wrap things up for their number one bloke in the western suburbs. This is just one of their problems when it comes to women.

We should never forget how Mr Davis in the other place described the family violence royal commission as a lawyers’ picnic. They will not commit to all 227 recommendations. We have invested $3.5 billion in tackling family violence because we know that one woman dies every week at the hands of a partner or ex-partner. The Liberal candidate for Melton, formerly the member for Burwood, refused to show any respect in this place when Australian of the Year Rosie Batty came to speak to Parliament. I am pleased to note that the communities of Melton and Burwood now have proud allies of women representing them.

Looking across the chamber today in question time, I noted that there were four Liberal women. I genuinely mean this, it must be lonely being a woman in the Liberal Party. Women make up more than 50 per cent of our cabinet. Our women’s caucus is made up of 34 women who shape policy, drive change and represent their communities with distinction, and in the Labor movement we have acknowledged that there are structural barriers to women advancing in all parts of society—that glass ceilings are real. That is why we introduced affirmative action many years ago. I believe that it was Minister Hutchins who helped drive that reform in the Labor Party, and we are better for it.

Ms Green: She had some help.

Ms HALL: She had some help, member for Yan Yean. Lots of women in the Labor movement organised to make that change. But over in the Liberal Party they support a merit-based system. On 11 September last year the Leader of the Opposition said:

I am being dragged towards that—

position of quotas—

… I still think we have a chance to change a few things in the current preselections or we will need to look at other mechanisms.

We do not have enough women in State or Federal Parliament. I don’t make any excuses for that. It is something the Liberal Party in Victoria needs to address.

A few months later at the December party conference the Liberal Party conference refused to endorse quotas. So here we are, the Wednesday after a federal election where the Liberal Party have been decimated and their ‘net zero is dead’ friends seem a little bit in a flap about climate science at the moment. We know that that is a very serious issue, but of course it is a complete joke to their future leader, Peter Dutton, who thinks that the impact on our nearest Pacific neighbours is hilarious.

The Victorian Liberals do not have a clue where they stand. I am glad the member for Brighton is in the chamber. Perhaps he can give us an indication of where the Liberal Party stands, because Mr Davis again on 8 March on ABC radio in an interview with Ali Moore tried to clear things up:

Ali, look, I would be very quite clear on this, that in fact every time a bill going through laying out targets has gone through the Parliament we have supported or not opposed it … If you want to go and check the parliamentary record, you will find that the decisions and the government’s targets have been waved through the Parliament by the opposition.

Ali Moore said:

So Victorian Liberal Party policy is to support net zero emissions by 2050. Is that correct?

Mr Davis:

That’s my understanding, yes.

And then Ali Moore notes in the interview that the opposition has not put out any media release or official policy statement to this effect, and Hansard also shows that Mr Davis personally voted against the Climate Change Bill 2016 in 2017 along with the Shadow Minister for Energy and Renewables, Craig Ondarchie. This mob cannot be trusted to act on the devastating impacts of climate change.

Mr Newbury interjected.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Brighton.

Ms HALL: I look forward to reading the member for Brighton’s various positions on climate change policy, though I did note that Mr Finn said yesterday that he has been announcing policy willy-nilly, so that is an interesting insight into the policy process in the Victorian Liberal Party.

As I said, the Victorian Liberal Party cannot be trusted on climate change. The women of Victoria know that. They know that pretty well in Kooyong, in the member for Brighton’s neighbourhood. They have failed to publish their policy online, not a single media release about it, just one rogue MP announcing his views in the Age. The simple truth is if the opposition had its way, we would not have had any new solar farms or wind farms in Victoria. We would be missing out on all the incredible benefits delivered by renewables, because when those opposite were last in power, when the Leader of the Opposition was the planning minister, his planning reforms effectively cancelled every wind farm in the state. We should have perhaps suggested to him that he could put them in Footscray, because he did whatever he wanted in Footscray, like he did down at Fishermans Bend. There were some rules for some parts of the state and other rules for other parts of the state—but I digress.

They have also voted against every important piece of renewable energy and climate change legislation that has come to this house, be it the Victorian renewable energy target, Victoria’s Climate Change Bill or the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment Bill 2020, which gave us the power to build the Victorian Big Battery. At the last election the Liberal Party promised to keep smashing our renewable energy industry, promising to scrap the Victorian renewable energy target, wanting to make the state’s power contracts fund a new gas power station and paying Hazelwood to stay open. They also voted against setting a fair price for solar generated on people’s rooftops. They are a party of climate change deniers and sceptics who do not care about tackling climate change or building the jobs of the future. When it comes to climate change the Liberal Party are wreckers.

The actions we take today on climate change are more important than ever. Here in Victoria our climate has already warmed by 1.2 degrees Celsius since reliable records began in 1910. We are already seeing reduced rainfall, more bushfire danger days and longer bushfire seasons. And if we follow a high-emissions scenario into the future, one led by the science sceptics over there, we can expect to experience double the number of very hot days in our state by the 2050s.

The Andrews Labor government has been proud to lead on climate change from the day we were elected. We have demonstrated the transition from a highly carbon-intensive economy to one that has cut emissions by 25 per cent since 2005 while growing our economy. Through our transformative Climate Change Act 2017 we have made it our goal to achieve net zero emissions in Victoria by 2050—that is the one the opposition voted against. We were one of the first jurisdictions in the world to take this vital step. We also developed Australia’s most robust approach to developing new targets, with a legislated requirement to set new interim targets each five years that would ratchet up action over time. And what did the Liberals do? Every step of the way they would vote against these reforms, standing in the way of the most important changes and indeed the most important piece of climate change legislation in any state in the country.

In May last year we released our climate change strategy. This strategy represents a fork in the road for our state, putting forward real ambition, respecting the goals of the Paris agreement and embracing the opportunities of a low-carbon future. As part of this we have set targets to cut Victoria’s emissions by 28 to 33 per cent below 2005 levels by 2025 and by 45 to 50 per cent by 2030, based on 2005 levels. These targets reinforce Victoria’s position as a climate leader and provide a strong contribution to the global action required to avoid dangerous climate change. The Andrews Labor government is leading the way in Australia, delivering the most rapid rate of decarbonisation of any major jurisdiction in the nation.

I go back to the 23 years that the Victorian Liberal Party have supported Mr Finn. He had the number one spot on the ticket in my community, and his electorate office is just down the road from mine. I have spoken about his contribution to Victoria and to public discourse over the years since my election. Just going to something that Mr Finn said—and this was well before the Victorian Liberal Party decided to wrap him up—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Member for Footscray, if you are referring to someone in the upper house, you need to say that they are a member of the upper house.

Ms HALL: My apologies, Deputy Speaker. A member for Western Metropolitan Region a couple of years ago said—and the Liberal Party stood by him at the time that he said this:

The election of President Trump in the United States was a clear, unequivocal statement from the people of the United States that they think climate change is nonsense, and that they have had enough. Indeed Australian people are saying exactly the same thing. They are saying exactly the same thing—that they have had enough of the carry-on that we hear from the extreme Greens and indeed from the climate change industry. Those in the climate change industry might not be green at all, but geez, they are making a lot of money out of it! They are doing very nicely out of the caper indeed, and that is what it is.

Yet the Victorian Liberal Party continued to stand by their man, saying he was the best choice for the Liberal Party in my community, out in Footscray. And so this—and many other reasons that I have set out in my contribution today—is why I grieve for the Victorian Liberal Party ever leading the great state of Victoria.